Developer Blogs

As it seems I'll be attending DreamHack winter 2010 for a couple of days (25-26/11). I'll be demoing the XBox360 version of TWTPB and collecting user feedback. Do some live coding etc.

If you are at DreamHack feel free to drop by the Linneaus University booth ( DreamExpo i B-hallen, B06:06).

Super Mario Pearl Beads

My kitchen wall is no longer empty...
3500+ beads.
~4 hours of work for two people.

Having been away from coding especially c++ far to long I've decided to make some changes to T.W.T.P.B. to get into the game again so to speak

I actually had a chat irl with two of the current top players and they wanted more rewards (i.e. energy) for killing enemies. Also I've had been pondering this idea that when you kill an enemy the bullets from that enemy are converted to small energy pellets. So this seemed like a pretty good thing and I have started to implement it.

There are however some decisions to be made:

Converting bullets per enemy seems to make the game a bit easy Possibly this should be on a per formation basis instead. Or this should be the rule when playing on "easy" and maybe do per formation on medium and no conversion on hard.

Any comments or ideas?

I hope to get some time to experiment and get an update out there asap.

Obviously, the title of this post is just a bad joke. I can't stop coding!

I've been hard at work on my new game (unannounced at this time) since some time in April, and it's getting closer and closer to the finish line; my goal is to be done with all the code by the end of August.

This game most likely won't be on Spell of Play, as I'm looking into other publishing options at the moment.

As I tend to blog here far to rarely, and also post news om my own site far to rarely as well, I've introduced a new perspective straight into my development workshop via this Sneak Peek page.

If you are in any way interested in what I'm up to there's no better place to stay updated.

I hope all you other indie-devs are having a productive year so far, and I hope to see more of your games here or any other where soon!

Peace!
/johno

As it seems the as far as I know nameless dog from Nintendo Duck Hunt has been spotted in my home town of Kalmar, Sweden. All according to local newspaper Barometern. I'll make sure to check this out myself asap

I guess nerdiness lives and prospers even in the heat of summer

I haven't been very active here at spellofplay.com lately. My time has been divided between work, kids and CrossFit. But now I finally got some work done on Hero and released a new version today on hUb.

Iteration 15 contains a lot of new stuff:

• Drop all items of same kind option
• Boost constitution spell symbol
• monsters depending on level disturbs rest
• Character generation interface
• Only three bodyparts, head, body and shoes
• Enemies can aggravate eachother by speach...
• enemies heal up when you leavel levels
• enemies casts spells
• quick cast spell by doubleclick on spell symbol
• repair in shops
• Active spells bars
• all boost spells should stay when resting but you will not regain mana until they are dispelled
• Dispell spells on clicking on active spell
• use potion quick bar
• sorting of savegames

Enjoy!

Some of you might wonder what I've been up to lately. Besides having a sprint on the site adding support for Twitter login I've been busy starting a research project at the university where I have my daytime job. The general idea is to take some of the experiences (10+ years) from game development and make further experiments to expand, enhance and validate & verify my findings in a scientific way. The result of this process will be a thesis and I'll become a Ph.D.

And without further adue I present my "hyper thesis", a.k.a. vision

Enhancing Quality of Software Architecture in Computer Games

The driving requirement of software architecture in computer games has since long been performance. However, focusing on performance alone often leads to problems in other areas; the software cannot be maintained or changed in an agile way and it becomes hard for developers to react to market changes or advances in hardware. Testing is hard or even impossible in many cases and reuse of code and design is minimal.

Modern approaches to software architecture in computer games, e.g. a modification of the model view controller (MVC) pattern, bear other qualities like changeability, maintainability, testability, and reusability without sacrificing performance. This is shown for a number of game types ranging from casual games to multi-player action titles. A standardized software architecture throughout many projects also enhances programmer productivity and project scalability.

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